Page:Schlick - Gesammelte Aufsätze (1926 - 1936), 1938.djvu/189

 particular construction corresponds to a particular fact? In a certain sense that may be so, but before drawing any further conclusions we shall do well to remark that a psychological investigation of the way in which a language is learned may not help us at all to understand the nature of language in general. The philosopher is concerned only with the essence or possibility of expression, the psychologist has to take the possibility for granted and shows only the way in which a learning child avails himself of it.

In reality Expression is entirely different from mere Representation, it is much more and cannot be derived from it. Genuine speech is something entirely new as compared with the simple repetition of signs whose meanings have been learned by heart. A parrot utters significant sentences, but it does not really "speak" in the proper sense of the word.

It is true, of course, that language is composed of words and that words are symbols in the sense explained, but that does not explain the possibility of expression. If language were nothing but a system of signs with fixed significations it would never be capable of communicating new facts. If its function consisted solely in representing thoughts or facts by means of symbols it could represent only such thoughts or facts to which a sign had been attached beforehand; a new fact would be one to which no symbol had been assigned, it would therefore be impossible to communicate it.

There would have to be as many signs (names) as there are facts; if a new fact occurred it could not be mentioned, because there would be no name to call it by.

This state of affairs is made very clear by what is often called the "language" of certain animals such as bees and ants. Their means of communication are not a language in our sense of the word at all, but only a number of signs or signals, each of which stands for a particular class of facts, as "there is honey", "there is danger", and so forth. In the case of the parrot there is, in most instances even less than this, its words being usually mere mechanical repetitions of sounds. The signals of bees and ants represent or indicate certain occurrences, they do not express them. They are restricted to these particular kinds of events and cannot represent anything else.

The essential characteristic of language, on the other hand, is its capability of expressing facts, and this involves the capability of expressing